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How focus stacking can help you to get super sharp landscapes

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Focus stacking is a popular technique for macro photographers. But did it ever occur to you to try it with landscapes? No? Nor me. But it makes a lot of sense, depending on the look you’re after. Although landscapes are often shot with ultra wide angle lenses, they can also be made at much longer focal lengths. I like to do this myself with a 70-200 f/2.8, but that means you start to see the effects of depth of field.

This video from photographer Mark Denney shows us how to use focus stacking techniques to get infinite depth of field for landscapes with any lens. Mark also goes over some shooting tips to help you get the best source material to work with, regardless of whether you use manual or auto focus.

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How a photographer persuaded President Lincoln to protect Yosemite

No matter how cliché it may sound, it seems that photography sometimes really can change the world and influence the course of history. A perfect example of this is a 19-century American photographer Carleton Watkins.

He was born in 1829 in New York, and upon moving to California, Yosemite became his most favorite subject. Believe it or not, it was thanks to his work and his love for Yosemite that this area was preserved. And not only that – he also influenced the development of the national park system in general. This is the story of photography that, indeed, changed the world.

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5 Reasons Landscape Photographers Have a Screw Loose

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I’m a landscape photographer. And I’m part of a crazy lot. I had this realization during a sleep deprived afternoon. My hazy mind was trying to get me through the rest of the day. It was also trying to comprehend how I arrived at the miserable state I was in.

It wasn’t hard to come 5 reasons why we landscape photographers definitely have a screw loose.

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How to enhance your landscape photos using Selective Color in Photoshop

One of the great things about Photoshop is that you can do almost everything in a variety of different ways. Blake Rudis of f64 Academy shows you how to enhance landscape photos using the Selective Color adjustment layer.

Frankly, I don’t know many people who enhance photos this way (including myself). So, I found this approach very interesting, and as it turned out – pretty useful, too. Using Selective Color on landscape photos gives you a great control and a wide range of changes to apply – from slightly enhanced natural look to the popular look with lifted blacks.

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Google AI now takes professional photos. And it does it based on Street View images

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Thanks to Google Street View, we can see many corners of the world we may never even visit.  Some artists even use it to create photos of remote places from their own home. Now, Google itself finds a way to produce professional-looking photos from their Street View shots. They have created Creatism, a deep-learning system that analyzes Street View scenes searching for a beautiful composition. The algorithm finds the scenes which it’s supposed to turn into shots worthy of professional photographers.

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Adventures in Scotland with a Hasselblad XPan and Kodak Portra

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There’s something very special about Scotland’s wilderness. It has a landscape like few other places in the world. Dutch photographer Tom Kluyver decided to visit Scotland for himself recently, along with his friend designer, Matthijs van Leeuwen. The pair spent a week exploring some of what Scotland has to offer, and decided to document the trip with film.

Specifically, Tom chose a Hasselblad XPan 35mm panoramic camera loaded with Kodak Portra film. Tom admits they weren’t fully prepared for what lay ahead of them, but that’s what makes trips like these so great. You never really know where you’re going to end up, or what you’re going to see.

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How to make a successful career as a landscape photographer

Making money from your favorite genre of photography sounds like a dream come true. If you are a landscape photographer and want to make a living out of it, Thomas Heaton has some valuable advice to share. In his latest video, he gives you five guidelines and a bunch of tips for succeeding in landscape photography market. A witty YouTube user described this video “like Obi-Wan passing over his knowledge of the Force,” and I must agree – it’s exactly like that.

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How I photographed rare moonlit Firefalls at Yosemite National Park

This is the famous and elusive Horsetail “Firefall” Fall in Yosemite, but unlike every other image you may have seen – always taken near sunset around February – the fire effect in this image is caused by moonlight. That’s the only possible way one could see the firefall and stars at the same time!

How does the firefall effect happen in the first place?

Before we dive into the moonlit firefall, let me quickly explain how the more popular firefall event works. That is, the one driven by direct sunlight during sunset.

It’s basically a rare event that happens in specific dates when the sun is about to set (so you get the typical “golden hour” colors) and its rays only hit in the thin area on the El Capitan walls right behind Horsetail Fall, reflecting it right against the waterfall, causing the effect that the water is indeed red or golden color, almost lava-like. Several things must come together for a firefall to form, though.

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The dos and don’ts of landscape photography

I find landscape photography to be a fun but challenging subject. I just often feel let down that the image just doesn’t do justice to the location. Part of the problem I think is that I don’t think a photograph ever can ever really compete with the experience of actually being there. Although, it may just be that I’m just not destined to be a landscape photographer.

Photographer Craig Roberts, on the other hand, likes shooting landscapes. And he’s rather good at it – certainly better than I’ll ever be. In this video, Craig goes through his “Dos” and “Don’ts” for landscape photography. And you may not agree with all of them, but that’s ok. Some of them boil down to personal preference.

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How I planned and shot an erupting volcano with the Milky Way

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Nature has lots to offer for landscape photographers. We love to shoot nature’s paintings. Storms, rainbows, tornadoes, lightning strikes: they’re all a gift from nature that we can play with as a landscape photographer. Volcanoes are one of them, too, especially when they’re erupting. I have been fascinated by volcanoes; they have been on my list to shoot for quite a while.

My younger brother recently went to Guatemala for some backpacking and learning the Spanish language. When he sent me some photos of an erupting volcano, my photography senses were immediately triggered. The erupting volcano was called ‘Fuego’ (literally “Fire”). I managed to find webcams and activity on scopes and checked how active Fuego was. According to the history, the volcano has remained quite active, but you had to be lucky to see a lot of eruptions. Still, the idea of meeting up with my brother and shooting a volcano seemed like a good enough reason to go.

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